Jane Hirshfield Quotes

I just can't help but see things differently.

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

I don't think you really can send an exact message, because any two viewers are so disparate, in terms of their backgrounds, their point of view, their histories, that there's no telling what that message might be.

I think perspective is a necessary, amazing thing.

Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

Everything is similar if you're willing to look far out of focus.

The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see.

Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware – beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

Everything hangs on one's thinking.

I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see.

Life may be seen through many windows, none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others.

We think of color as a thing that we’re receiving. And if you go into one of the Skyspaces, you can see that it’s possible to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don’t change the color of the sky, but I changed the context of vision.

I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don't have that insight.

Remember that all is opinion.

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.

We have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of the world.

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

Don't tell me what I'm not doing when I'm doing what you don't think I'm doing!

When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint... I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything... and then make something... Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it... Nothing is important... so everything is important.

Your challenge is not your challenge. Your challenge is the way you think about your challenge. Your problem is not your problem; it is the way you look at it.